Saturday, March 5, 2011

Fun With Wages!

We know, then, that American wages didn’t increase, and we know that Canada’s didn’t increase—so whose did? Somewhere in the EU? I hear good things about Germany’s economy, right? Well:

The Global Wage Report by the International Labor Organization – a United Nations agency in which workers, employers and governments are represented – found that [German] gross wages fell 4.5 percent when adjusted for inflation, according to news magazine Der Spiegel.

If the share of GDP going to wages decreases, where’s it going? Profits, of course, which ultimately benefit executives and shareholders disproportionately. It’s hard to say specific policies are at fault—I mean, few people accuse Norway of being a hard-right libertarian paradise, and yet there it is near the bottom of the list. So there’s definitely something going on here…